Re: [IP] Google search and seizure, etc. vs. technologists

In the 1980s, the "average user" would never need a local area network in his home. In the early 1990s, the "average user" would never understand or need the Internet. And so on.

In fact, the reality of the current security and privacy mess with the Internet helps to prove my point. For example, talk to the folks who drive around plotting all of the open wireless LANs that are literally everywhere in virtually every neighborhood. The vast majority of them have *no* security at all -- not even cruddy old WEP. This includes businesses, medical offices, you name it, as well as vast numbers of private homes. Yet, for years every WLAN product has included at the very least WEP capabilities, and instructions on how to set it up. Despite this, many people's open WLANs are constantly being abused, sometimes with tragic results. That situation is gradually starting to improve, but only because the setting up of *some* level of security has become part of the standard installation scripts for many products. But until this became the *default*, even when it was easy to use, most people didn't bother. Why? Most of the time, simply because they didn't believe that any associated risks applied to them -- and that view is easy to understand. The computer industry is great at promoting the vast benefits of their products, but do their best to keep the downsides to the fine print, buried in click-through license mumbo-jumbo that even many lawyers would have trouble understanding, along with lilliputian quick-start guides that are the only instructions many people read. The same thing goes for Internet services. It is utterly reasonable to expect that the *defaults* provided will respect people's privacy, security, and other rights. We are a society of laws and those laws are there (at least in theory) to help protect those rights. It is unfair in the extreme to suggest that anyone who doesn't jump through hoops to protect themselves from information abuse is somehow negligent, while asserting that legislative efforts should not be made to rein in the way that the services behave -- so that those services meet a reasonable standard that society agrees is appropriate. Yes, imposing society's will on such firms can be tough to do, especially when dealing with powerful and well-heeled interests. But not to do so -- to not even try -- is just surrendering to what most of us know in our hearts is just plain wrong. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren@pfir.org or lauren@vortex.com or lauren@eepi.org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, EEPI - Electronic Entertainment Policy Initiative - http://www.eepi.org Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com - - -

Begin forwarded message:

From: Phil Karn Date: December 3, 2005 7:10:30 PM EST To: dave@farber.net Cc: ip@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [IP] Google search and seizure, etc. vs. technologists

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From: Lauren Weinstein

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1) Any practical attempt to "swamp" Google's database in such a manner is unlikely to succeed, given the sheer volume of legit queries that they receive. I suspect they'd be smart enough to detect abuse patterns fairly easily. That kind of analysis is their bread and butter.

The idea is not to "swamp" Google. It's simply to create a little plausible deniability -- i.e., reasonable doubt -- that a given search was entered by the user and not by the automatic daemon.

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2) Attempts to purposely "abuse" Google in such a manner (faked requests) may well violate their Terms of Service, and if they don't now you can be sure that they will in some future version of the ToS. The likely result will at a minimum be bans and ISP actions, and at the max lawsuits. Pull out your wallet.

Again, "swamping" or "abusing" Google is not the intent, nor is it very likely given Google's strong emphasis on performance and scalability. The idea is simply to create doubt that a given query was generated by a human, not by the robot. The "quality" of the synthetic queries is much more important than their quantity.

Still, the extra traffic just might have the effect of encouraging Google to adopt a stronger privacy policy. Not that I'd place much stock in that, of course (see below.)

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3) Routing queries through anon proxies will provide some protection for the technological elite who understand such things. They will not protect the average user, who most likely doesn't understand the risks and issues, and will never use such proxies, even assuming that they were trivial to use.

I wish I had a nickel for everything I've been told "the average user" would never understand, need or be able to use. Back in the 1970s, the "average user" would never understand, need or be able to use a personal computer. In the 1980s, the "average user" would never need a local area network in his home. In the early 1990s, the "average user" would never understand or need the Internet. And so on.

It is no more necessary that the "average user" understand how an anonymizing Google proxy works to use it effectively than to understand the fields in TCP/IP packet headers. The whole idea of civilization and commerce is that many people can benefit from specialized knowledge and skills that they themselves lack. The open source movement and the Internet itself have certainly demonstrated this.

Personally, I prefer the anonymizing proxy over the random query generator. The proxy is likely to be more effective, and it generates no extra load. I mention the generator mainly to be complete. My point is that there *are* technical defenses against potential privacy abuses, and we can implement them ourselves instead of naively demanding that Google respect our privacy against their own commercial interests.

And even if Google were completely honest, they would still be subject to Patriot Act abuses that we would never know about.

The sad fact is that "national security" has become the root password to the Constitution. The only effective defense against a "rooted" system is not to put any sensitive information in it in the first place.

--Phil

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